Donald Trump has permitted himself the delicious pleasure of trolling Hollywood’s celebrity-woke community who once dreamed of preventing his second term with their collective prestige. He has found a new wellspring of liberal tears in which to bathe. But whatever our feelings about his proposed “Hollywood ambassadors”, Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone – ambassadors to Hollywood from Maga? to Maga from Hollywood? – it’s possible to wonder if the ambassadors themselves have a right to be a bit miffed.
Hollywood ambassador? Gibson has directed a number of feature films, (Stallone and Voight also have directing credits); these are vast organisational challenges, requiring energy, vision, skill and political finesse. And that zero-experience lunkhead Pete Hegseth gets to be defence secretary? Despite only knowing how to do sycophantic interviews with the once-and-future C-in-C on Fox News? What an insult to Gibson, Voight and Stallone who surely deserve cabinet posts. Arnold Schwarzenegger is perhaps constitutionally out of the running to be a Hollywood ambassador despite his own political experience, maybe because of his Austrian birth or his bold questioning of rightwing views.
